It is a big day for the biotech industry in its global quest to profit from every single meal you consume whether it be animal or plant based fare.
The very first publicly available frankenburgers were eaten in London by two guinea pigs volunteers as row upon row of VIPs applauded, TV cameras rolled and cameras flashed.
I wrote about the impending debut of lab meat less than two years ago. At the time, Dr. Mark Post of Maastricht University said, “I’m hopeful we can have a hamburger in a year.”
In reality, it took a few more months for the first hamburgers to be ready with the biggest problem being the whiteness of the lab meat due to the lack of myoglobin, the iron carrying blood protein that gives meat its color.
This biotech challenge was solved with the addition of a little beet juice and saffron for “natural” color along with the lab-grown bovine beef muscle cells, salt, egg powder, and enriched breadcrumbs.
Dr. Post did the honors by cooking up and serving the frankenburgers himself at the high profile tasting.
All together now, “Ewwwwwwwwwww!”
Proponents of lab grown meat say that development of this technology and widespread availability is critical to head off a “looming” food crisis and an environmental catastrophe due to rising population and a growing demand for meat in countries such as China and Brazil. Plant-based protein substitutes like seitan and soy protein have helped somewhat, but the popularity of these products has not taken hold in mass markets.
Sounds like very effective, sob story, save the world marketing to me – the same bologna baloney used to promote GMOs. Dr. Mark Post said in a statement in advance of the tasting:
“What we are going to attempt is important because I hope it will show cultured beef has the answers to major problems that the world faces. Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven’t altered them in any way. For it to succeed, it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing.”
Mmmmm. The bovine muscle cells haven’t been altered in any way? That must mean that products containing them would be labeled “natural”, right?
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is very excited over this technology so much so that the organization is sponsoring a $1 million prize for the first venture to commercialize the production of lab-grown chicken meat.
Does this mean that some vegans might consider eating lab meat? Apparently so.
Fortunately, lab meat at the supermarket is still years away as the price tag for each lab burger currently runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can bet when it becomes commercially available, however, that inroads into the consumer market will happen with dizzying speed such as what happened with GMOs which now are in approximately 80% of supermarket foods and were rare only a decade or so ago. It’s not just packaged foods either. In the summer of 2012, large quantities of GMO sweet corn appeared on grocery store shelves and roadside stands and sold as “fresh” produce.
Other technologies in the works for creating lab meat for the consumer market include California-based Modern Meadow which is working on 3-D printing techniques for creating artificial meat as well as artificial leather from cultured cells.
Modern Meadow co-founder and CEO, Andras Forgacs, said that commercial leather products grown in a lab will be available within the next few years. He predicted that meat would take longer due to technical and regulatory complexities.
Forgacs’s own father cooked up and ate a 3-D-printed pork chop during a TedMed presentation in 2011. He is excited about the frankenburger tasting stating:
“This is a field that’s going to require innovation from many corners of the world. I hope this creates more awareness for this emerging field of technology.”
You can be sure that biotech lobbyists will have a field day with this technology, spending millions schmoozing elected officials and government bureaucrats into looking the other way when it comes to proper labeling of these foods. Perhaps the GMO labeling bills already in the works should be revised before legislative vote to include requirements for proper labeling of lab meat as a preemptive step to avoid yet another grassroots battle in the years to come.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources:
Rise of the ‘Frankenburger’: World’s first test-tube meat patty served in London today
So their trading one “problem” for another problem? Oh, the joys of technology. First, they make huge confinement operations than next they come up with synthetic burgers.
Why don’t vegans get over their ideology and simply eat the real thing? Animals have been roaming the Earth for thousands of years and suddenly its considered unsustainable?
Here’s my take on the matter:
I don’t know enough about the procedures, but I would love to see where this goes. Here are the potential pros/cons as far as I can see with my very limited knowledge of the subject:
potential pros:
For one thing, if it comes from muscle stem cells, it should be pure muscle. It would also make it more consistent. It would also be cheaper to produce. Obviously, it would also mean a significantly less negative impact on the environment and significantly decreased animal torture/slaughter. The thing I’m confused about is, why would it be so lacking in taste is it’s muscle?
What I’m concerned about:
Where do the stem cells come from? How are those cows treated? What are they fed? How are they screened for diseases?
Which chemicals are used during processing? Which chemicals leech during production? What’s added (what does it contain other than the “meat”)?
As always, we can never know the effects (long or short term) whether they are unexpected, untested or just blamed on something unrelated. Food writer Sybil Kapoor said she felt “uneasy”: “The further you go from a normal, natural diet the more potential risks people can run in terms of health and other issues,” she said.“
How about all that testing they did before they allowed the pink ‘meat glue’.
Huh?
Why didn’t the high-ranking corporate execs eat the hamburger instead of volunteers? As far as vegans supporting it. If they eat gmo grains and this meat franken meat, vegans will soon become extinct.
While the food situation looks bleak, I was buoyed by a Internet work shop by the Civilized Caveman, which featured various paleo foddies in their 20’s and 30’s. One couple, had 2 million people following their blog and website. This is very encouraging because these men and women are hard core foodies and extremely tech savvy. They all eat grass-fed beef and if someone tried to take that away from them, they could be quite a force to deal with.
Andras Forgacs. It sounds like he’s gagging too!
All I read here is trash talk. What is the actual problem with this new technology?
Why don’t we feed it to rats for a few years and find out? Of course the biotech industry wants profits and $$ NOW and doesn’t want to waste any precious patent time on testing which would mean someone else would rake in the big bucks on the technology if they get it to market more quickly. So much easier to just put it out there, grease the palms of the FDA and the USDA and whatever other government officials around the world take bribes (or promises of lucrative post-government consulting gigs) and use actual human beings as the guinea pigs. If anyone does get sick or dies, it would be years down the road (slow kill like with GMOs) and the lawsuits would total only a fraction of the potential profits. All in the business plan my friend.
Why don’t you provide any quasi-plausible theory of ANY pathophysiological mechanism caused by GMOs? I know I wouldn’t be able to find EVIDENCE, but why not at least a hippie theory about how ingesting an organism with altered DNA causes a heath problem? The DNA gets chopped up by stomach enzymes, the sequence means absolutely nothing in the digestive process. Now if the DNA was causing the plant to make some kind of toxin, that would obviously be a different case, but what reason do you have to believe that?
Here’s some science for you on the danger of GMOs.
1) Scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences reported between 2005 and 2006 that female rats fed Roundup Ready-tolerant GM soy produced excessive numbers of severely stunted pups with more than half of the litter dying within three weeks, and the surviving pups completely sterile. http://www.bioeticanet.info/omg/transgeREC.pdf
2) In 2005, scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra, Australia reported that a harmless protein in beans (alpha-amylase inhibitor 1) transferred to peas caused inflammation in the lungs of mice and provoked sensitivities to other proteins in the diet (Ho MW. Transgenic pea that made mice ill. Science in Society 29, 28-29, 2006).
3) From 2002 to 2005, scientists at the Universities of Urbino, Perugia and Pavia in Italy published reports indicating that GM soy affected cells in the pancreas, liver and testes of young mice (Science in Society 29, 26-27, 2006).
4) In 2004, Monsanto’s secret research dossier showed that rats fed MON863 GM corn developed serious kidney and blood abnormalities (GMWatch, 23 April 2004.)
5) In 1998, Dr. Arpad Pusztai and colleagues formerly of the Rowett Institute in Scotland reported damage in every organ system of young rats fed GM potatoes containing snowdrop lectin, including a stomach lining twice as thick as controls (Contaminants and Toxins, (J P F D’Mello ed.), Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh, CAB International, 2003).
6) Also in 1998, scientists in Egypt found similar effects in the guts of mice fed Bt potato (Fares NH and El-Sayed AK. Fine structural changes in the ileum of mice fed on dendotoxin-treated potatotes and transgenic potatoes. Natural Toxins, 1998, 6, 219-33; also “Bt is toxic” by Joe Cummins and Mae-Wan Ho, ISIS News 7/8, February 2001, ISSN: 1474-1547 (print), ISSN: 1474-1814 (online) http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php Agricultural Biotechnology 2006, http://www.ISAAA.org).
7) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had data dating back to early 1990s showing that rats fed GM tomatoes with antisense gene to delay ripening had developed small holes in their stomachs (Pusztai A, Bardocz S and Ewen SWB. Genetically modified foods: Potential human health effects. In Food Safety: Contaminants and Toxins, (J P F D’Mello ed.), Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh, CAB International, 2003).
8) In 2002, Aventis company (later Bayer Cropscience) submitted data to UK regulators showing that chickens fed glufosinate-tolerant GM corn Chardon LL were twice as likely to die compared with controls (Food Safety: Contaminants and Toxins (CABI Publishing 2003 also Novotny E. Animals avoid GM food, for good reasons. Science in Society 21, 9-11, 2004).
9) In 2012, researchers found that female rats fed Roundup Ready-tolerant GM corn developed large tumors and dysfunction of the pituitary gland; males also developed tumors and exhibited pathologies of the liver and kidney (Séralini, GE and others. Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maiz. Food and Chemical Toxicology 2012).
10) Testing by Monsanto itself has found that rats eating GM maize (MON863) develop smaller kidneys and show startling changes in blood chemistry. One blood change included an increase in white blood cell count which demonstrates that the GM food elicited an immune reaction by the body.
I am so happy I found this site. And Thank You for talking straight facts.
Do you have this list of research on FB so we can share the various study findings? Thank you
There is no problem. Cow muscle cells are cow muscle cells. I hope they can attach electrodes to the lab meat and stimulate the motions of the animal, if that would effect the way the meat tastes. Maybe they can even create food that is better than the food that exists now, which is the same process that has been going on since the discovery of agriculture. And there is nothing wrong with GMO foods in particular. This is just the general, irrational, “everything-that-is-“natural”-is-magical-and-always-good” circle jerk.
Of course nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Science is God to the biotech scientists and their supporters and anyone who questions it is bullied, insulted and called stupid. Your comment is par for the course.
Sarah: Science is God as long as it agrees with their preconceived notions, personal prejudices and financial incentives.
Just when I think food couldn’t be any scarier. Wow, this is just the way Margaret Atwood describes the future of food in her book, Year of the Flood.
Sarah, I read the referenced article on GMO sweet corn, which suggests “… however, if you can’t find a Verified version, eating Certified Organic sweet corn is a great step towards protecting you and your family from this experimental food.” If this is the case, why is sweet corn on the clean 15 list? Do you have any suggestions for buying fresh and safe, conventional sweet corn at the grocery store? I’m sure the grocer would not know whether its GMO or not, or at least I wouldn’t trust his answer if I asked.
I have personally stopped eating all corn unless it is certified organic or an heirloom variety.
The Dirty Dozen/Clean 15 is only in regards to pesticides/herbicides, I think, not GMO.
This is frightening… not that anything could go wrong.
The “looming food crises,” could certainly be resolved by allowing herds of animals to roam the land as they once used to; which would in fact, turn our deserts back into the grasslands they originally were. We get grass fed beef, the land is restored, no frankenmeat needed. Win/win in my book. How to Green the Worlds Deserts: http://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI
Since im no longer vegan I only buy organic animal products and meat mostly chicken from an organic free range farm. I would never eat this meat. I would switch to veggie if it was ever the only thing available. How disturbing!
I will never eat this stuff and will tell anyone who’ll listen of the risks! However it MIGHT be a good day for animals, billions of whom currently live and die in misery thanks to consumer’s desire for cheapest meat, regardless of quality.
You know, that is a great point Gigi … those of us in the know will continue to seek local, healthy, pastured meats because the nutrients in green grass,healthy soil and sunshine can’t be replicated in a lab. Those who don’t care will eat garbage regardless so why not lab meat instead of meat from tortured animals? The only thing that concerns me is that the lab meat will no doubt have even fewer nutrients than CAFO meat so the unfortunate people who eat it will become more unhealthy and more burdened with illness and discomfort than they already are.
>> the nutrients in green grass,healthy soil and sunshine can’t be replicated in a lab
I think this product and concept are disgusting, but that comment is just silly; Of course they can!
What are the risks?
How about this … we feed it to rats for a few years and find out in an objective, truly scientific way (as opposed to industry funded pseudo science that is more marketing than true science) instead of using human beings as guinea pigs which is what is happening with GMOs right now in the United States.
I heard they want to reduce the saturated fats and the cholesterol to make it more healthy. I agree with Sarah, all the nutrients from a real grassfed, freerange animal will be missing and it will devastate the health of people even more.
That´s so disgusting. I would never eat that at all.